


Bitter Orange

by Anonymous



Series: Spectral Vengeance [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Cervix Penetration, Coercion, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Extremely Dubious Consent, Forced Pregnancy, Ghost Sex, Giving Birth, Impregnated by Ghosts, Multi, Other, Sexual Coercion, Water Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 17:28:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20933993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Lil would do anything to be rid of her terrible boss. Really, anything at all.





	Bitter Orange

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WretchedArtifact](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WretchedArtifact/gifts).

Lil stepped into the clawfoot tub with a sigh. Sarina had gotten on her last nerve, the greasy Chinese food was sitting uncomfortably in her stomach, and she kept having the creepy feeling that someone was watching her. But hot baths cured all ills, especially when scented with a bitter orange bath bomb.

She was tall and broad and had a hard time finding bathtubs she could fit into comfortably, but this one was nearly Jacuzzi-size, and she sank into the steaming water up to her neck, feeling the heat ease away the aches of travel and the stress of dealing with her terrible boss. She idly stirred the water with her foot, breathing in the scent of oranges and cloves, watching the ripples slosh back and forth. Her world narrowed to the tub and the water and the fragrant steam. She wished she could hide in here forever and leave Sarina and Virgil to try to run their stupid seances by themselves. It was easier to have daydreams like that than to really contemplate quitting. She didn't have the guts to quit. The money was too good, and there was too much risk that Sarina would tell the cops where to find her. One of those wouldn't have been enough to keep her in this shitty job, but the two together were more than she could fight.

Maybe Sarina would trip on the carpet and break her neck. Or take a bath of her own and drown in it. Or... just about anything, honestly, that would let Lil be free of her.

"That can be arranged," said a voice next to her ear.

Lil shrieked and struggled to sit up, sloshing water onto the tile floor. She looked around wildly, gasping. No one was there. Had she fallen asleep and dreamed it? What a stupid thing to do in the bath, she could have drowned, she'd better get out—

"No, we're very real," the voice said. Or... voices? It was the weirdest sound Lil had ever heard, echoey and sparse, like parts of what made a normal human voice were missing and bits of other voices had been used to patch up the gaps.

"What the fuck," she whispered.

"Your Neanderthal brain wiring was correct," the voice said in her other ear. "This creepy old house is very thoroughly haunted. You should have run while you had the chance."

Ropes of water rose up around her shoulders and pulled her back down into the tub. She screamed again, thrashing, but it held her firmly in place, leaving only her head and neck unsubmerged.

"Lil, Lil," the voice chided, "don't waste your strength. You know you can't fight us. You can't even fight yourself. Every time you try, you lose."

She squeezed her eyes shut. "God, if that isn't the fucking truth."

"We are very definitely not God," the voice said, amused. "But we only tell the truth. Isn't it refreshing to hear after all those lies you tell yourself and everyone else?"

The water formed an arm and hand that patted her condescendingly on the head. Drops of water rolled down her forehead. She wished she could lift her own hand and brush them away.

"Are you really ghosts?" she asked. "Fuck, I can't believe I'm saying that."

"We were telling the truth about that too," the voice said. "And also about arranging for you to be free of Sarina... for a price."

"What..." She swallowed. "What price? Because I would pay a lot for that."

"We have no use for money," the ghost rasped. "But we have a use for you—or rather, for your body."

Lil felt a flare of panic lance through her chest. She tried to struggle again but the water held her firmly. "What do you mean?"

"Many of us died before we could have children," the ghost said. "We believe we have found a way to make up for this lack, but it requires a healthy young person who could serve as our surrogate. You fit the bill."

"You want to _impregnate_ me?" Lil looked around again. The room still seemed empty. "With _what_?"

"With sufficient determination, we can manifest physically for a time," the ghost said. A chilly invisible hand caressed Lil's face. She shuddered. "And we are extremely determined."

"Okay. Okay. Fuck." She shook her head. "So you put a, a ghost baby in me, and I come back here in nine months and birth it for you, and then you'll, what, freak out Sarina enough that she goes off and raises goats on a mountain or something? Is that the deal?"

"We won't need nine months. The entire process will take place tonight. As for Sarina, we wouldn't inflict her on innocent goats. She will not live to see the morning."

Lil shivered. Wishing death on someone was one thing. Purchasing it was another. "What if I say no?"

"It won't actually change anything," the ghost said. "We'd kill Sarina anyway. She's a human cancer. And you have no way to escape us—we make use of you whether you agree or not." The cold hand stroked her cheek again. She shook her head desperately as though she could dislodge it. "But this will be a rather challenging process and it will be easier if you're cooperative. Also, we thought it would be amusing for you to have the illusion of agency and consent." The voice was nearly purring. "How will you choose to view this situation? Are you a helpless victim, the way you like pretending to be so you can absolve yourself of the consequences of your choices? Or are you going to admit that you want her dead, and want it enough to open your legs to a ghostly rapist?"

"I hate her so much," Lil whispered. "If it weren't for her, I wouldn't even be here."

"Of course, everyone is responsible except you," the ghost said. "Poor little Lil, pushed around by fate and manipulative villains. Forced into a life of crime—"

"Fuck you, okay?" Lil clenched her fists under the water. "You want to hear me say it, fine, yes, I'll say it. I want her to fucking die. I want you to kill her slowly and painfully. I want it enough to have your little fucking ghost baby. Just promise me I can walk out of here tomorrow without looking back."

"There, isn't that better than giving up?" the ghost said. The water began to stir around Lil as though the giant tub was a Jacuzzi after all. "The bargain is made. Life given, life taken. And now, it's traditional to lie back and think of England."

The movement in the water began to feel like hands, dozens of hands made of water, stroking and caressing her. Lil squirmed, feeling arousal begin to build despite her terror. She knew the ghost could hear her thoughts and there was no point to hiding her responses as liquid fingers tweaked her nipples and probed between her legs. Ropes of water wrapped around her ankles to pull them up and apart until her feet dangled over the sides of the tub. The air was cold against her wet skin. The tang of bitter orange sparked in her nose.

A thin current of icy water ran over her from shoulder to thigh. She felt disoriented, her nerves unable to process the simultaneous heat and cold. Like a fluid needle, the cold dove into her cunt and stabbed at a tender spot deep inside her. She cried out.

"Take it like a good girl," the ghost murmured in her ear.

She gasped "Oh, fuck, _fuck_" as the cold thing inside her began to pry her cervix open. It hurt, a deep ache of wrongness in a place that nothing should touch. Then she was hit with a wave of cramps, like the worst period she'd ever had. She could feel the cold inside her, coiling and expanding. Her belly ached. She stared as it began to swell under the water.

"Our child is feeding off your life force so it can grow," the ghost said conversationally. "This may be a little uncomfortable. But it's small, so it won't take enough to kill you."

Lil's heart pounded and her breath came in gasps. She started to feel dizzy. It felt like a chunk of ice was lodged inside her, growing instead of melting within her heated body. Her skin strained and stretched as more cramps shook her. She could actually feel her expanding uterus pushing against her stomach, making her queasy. Acid burned at the back of her throat. She closed her eyes and concentrated on trying not to throw up or faint.

The chunk of ice now felt as big as a football. Bigger. She pressed her hands against her abdomen and could actually feel the chill of it radiating out through her skin as it grew. The hot water was turning tepid. She shivered uncontrollably, making little waves that sloshed against her. A cold sweat broke out on her forehead.

A tendril of water extended from the tub and turned the hot water tap. Its squeak was loud and echoey in the closed room. Hot water poured into the tub, stirred around by the ghost's churning hands. Lil slowly stopped shivering. The tendril turned the water off.

She felt limp, her limbs spindly and useless as her middle swelled up like a balloon. Tears leaked from her closed eyes. She focused on breathing through the pain and the strangeness. Soon it would be over. Soon.

She had almost found a way to relax when she felt it move.

Its first motions were tentative, but as it grew, it became stronger. An icy elbow jabbed out next to her navel, making her yelp; an icy foot tried to hook around her ribs. She risked a look and was shocked by the enormity of her belly. She could see the movement barely held in check by her thin-stretched skin.

"Get it out," she begged. "Please, get it the fuck out of me!"

"You'll know when it's ready to come out," the ghost said. "Not yet."

"Please," Lil whimpered. "Please, please... it's so big, I can't..."

The ghostly child wriggled inside her, turning slow somersaults, lashing out with hands and feet. It felt as though it would tear out of her if it couldn't find the exit.

Cramps spiked through her back and belly. She grunted as though someone had punched her. 

"Good, the contractions are beginning," the ghost said. "Now to prepare you for the birth."

A probe formed in the water and slowly pushed into her. She threw her head back, gasping. It was so warm inside her, warmer than a person would have been, almost too hot against her most tender flesh. There was no thrusting, no mimicry of human sex, only a steady pressure that gradually increased as more water flowed in. Lil was so full. Even that time her college girlfriend fisted her, she'd never been so full. And it kept growing and growing inside her cunt, pressing her open, stretching her wide. It ached, but the pain was drowned out by the contractions, which were already coming harder and faster. She thrashed around, splashing water everywhere.

"Yell as much as you want," it said. "No one else is in this wing of the house."

Another contraction hit and she did yell. It ebbed and she gasped, sucking air into her compressed lungs. All she wanted was to expel the invader and be done with this nightmare.

With the next contraction, she leaned back against the wall of the tub and began to push.

A deep, chilly ache inside her told her the ghost-child had breached her cervix. It was so cold, so cold. It made her muscles want to seize up. She forced herself to keep bearing down with every tearing pain, groaning and cursing and gasping, her body desperate to rid itself of this parasite.

A push and the heat pressing her cunt open was abruptly and shockingly displaced by icy cold. She sobbed. Another push and she felt the creature begin to emerge. Its body squirmed horribly inside her, as eager to be free as she was eager to get it out.

"One more," the ghost said eagerly.

One more push and it was out, out, _out_ of her. She collapsed against the tub, weeping. Her body was distended, empty, sore. Her throat was raw from screaming. She felt as though she'd never be truly warm again.

The cold thing bobbed in the water. Cold hands swooped in and lifted it away.

She waited for the ghost to tell her it was all over, but no voice spoke. The water was just water now, and when she finally managed to sit up, no spectral hands or fluid ropes held her back.

Slowly and stiffly, Lil got out of the tub and pulled the plug. Water was all over the floor. She ignored it and pulled her towel off the heated rack, wrapping it around herself as though it had any hope of fighting the lingering chill inside her. She made her way out to the bedroom and sat down on the hearth, as close to the fire as she dared to get. Huddled in her towel, she stared into the flames, feeling the pulsing cramps as her uterus contracted, knowing her body and mind would never fully recover from being so thoroughly violated.

She wondered what would happen to Sarina. She hoped it was something even worse.

Eventually, deciding she was as warm as she could get, she crawled into bed and passed out.

* * *

In the morning she could barely move. Any notion that the encounter had only been a vivid nightmare was erased by the stabbing pain in her belly and lower back, the streaks of blood on her sheets, and the puddles all over the bathroom. But Sarina never tolerated anything that looked like weakness, so Lil was used to working through pain. She took four Advil, stuck a pad in her underwear, and mopped up the floor. Then she went downstairs and made coffee as though it had been an entirely ordinary night and was now an entirely ordinary day.

She took a mug up to Sarina's room and knocked. No one answered. For the first time she began to let herself hope that the ghost had kept its end of the bargain—but maybe Sarina was still asleep. She pushed the door open.

The room was empty. An eye mask lay on the pillow of the unmade bed.

"A life given," a voice whispered in her ear. "A life taken."

Lil drank half of Sarina's coffee and felt it warm her up inside. She waited until she'd stopped smiling before she went to wake up Virgil. 

Hours later, after they'd given up the search, she went up to her room and packed her things. She threw her remaining bath bombs in the trash. She never wanted to smell bitter orange again.

As Virgil put the SUV in a low gear and drove it slowly down the snowy drive, Lil didn't look back at the creepy old house. She rested her head on the back of the seat, felt every bump in the road jostle her aching middle, listened to the quiet of not being yelled at or snarked at or insulted or threatened, and tried to tell herself it had been worth the price.


End file.
